


vertigo

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Daisy is kind of noir heroine, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Hotel Sex, Missions, Partnership, Phil Coulson Is Very Pathetic, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 21:23:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7070899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's waiting for him.</p>
<p>(Post-season 3 fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	vertigo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



When he gets out of the bathroom the lights are off and he knows he didn’t turn them off.

His eyes dart immediately, through the darkness, towards the gun on the bed.

“You really think you can get to the ICER before I use my powers?” she asks. Rhetorically. Cocky.

Coulson draws a sharp breath, hearing her voice - torn between wanting to savour it (it’s been half a year) and the need to think and think fast, find a way to convince her to give herself up, or otherwise corner her until she sees the necessity of doing so.

Maybe he just needs to talk to her and everything will be all right.

Everything will be fine.

Behind her, through the window, a green light comes from the shop name on the other side of the building, so Coulson sees her shape before he can see her face. He sees the negative image first, the dark trace her body will leave when she does too.

When she leaves.

He still has his hand extended towards the weapon. He drops it to his side. Daisy quirks her eyebrow, like she approves of this decision. 

She is not going to let him take her in, that much he knows, and he is not sure he can force her, not sure he wants to find out, if he wants to ever come to the point where he _could_ , where he is in the vantage position. He lacks conviction, he guesses.

For now he guesses he should be content with getting to look at her. It’s almost a shock to the senses (her voice too, always her voice), after months of looking at her through binoculars, or across ample expanses of space, or in the traces she leaves on photographs and security tapes, on the little Twitter hashtags by fans and haters, Coulson’s favorite being #quakespotting, and how he learned the rudiments of Daisy’s software to use the tools she left behind against her. She was there too, in the coding, and Coulson learned her other language to get closer.

But now she is in front of him and in the flesh and there’s still enough of the young woman from years before - the tilt of the head, a certain impatience, with him or the world, Coulson has never been sure - to make his chest ache. Even the wig can’t hide her completely.

She looks scary, yet Coulson can’t find it in him to be scared of her. But now for the first time he understands how strangers who know nothing of Daisy could look at her figure and be frightened of _Quake_.

Daisy flicks a glance at the board propped against the bed, its contents unmistakable even in this darkness. For the first time in months Coulson sees his acts and himself from outside, a vague feeling of embarrassment finally reaching him. He knows it looks almost creepy from the that perspective, no matter how he’s been convincing himself he was helping her. The truth is here is proof he’s been collecting her image, collecting her, for months, pinning her face to his wall like he’s hunting his victim.

But then he sees - through this darkness - Daisy’s amused quirked mouth.

“It’s not what it looks like?” she teases him.

He had somehow forgotten her humor. How could he have forgotten her humor? It’s one of the best things about her, one of the things he misses the most, even though he’s only realizing just now.

“I don’t know, what does it look like?” he says, unable to keep up with her. As always. It’s almost familiar. He misses that too, being wrong-footed, being always panting always running after her, to be worthy of her.

She’s still smiling. “Well, I’m flattered.”

“Daisy…”

She silences with a movement of her neck.

“Earlier, today. I was trying to figure out if you really thought you could get to me in time, or if you were purposely giving the alarm a little too late.”

“I was really trying my best,” he says. Daisy nods, looking disappointed - or more like baffled that her instincts were wrong. “But I also try to make sure _no one else_ gets to you before I do.”

“That’s what I thought,” she says.

She does a take around the room, examining it closely. Kind of a mess, kind of not. He can’t remember if it’s his own clean habits or Mack’s help keeping the room from shipwrecking like his inhabitant. Who threw away the cups of coffee on the windowsill?

Daisy examines the papers on the bedside table, picks up the bottle of painkillers.

“The leg still hurts?” she asks and it _almost_ sounds casual, like she had nothing to do with it, like guilt didn’t show in that very casualness, in the way she doesn’t look at his body.

“Only when I’m awake,” Coulson jokes.

“Which according to Mack is _always_ ,” she points out.

“You mean according to Elena,” he replies, resenting the backchannel. To Daisy’s credit she looks a bit guilty. “This is unfair. You can know how I’m doing but I am not extended the same luxury.”

He is angry. She’s been keeping tabs.

Daisy turns and looks at him, stares with an icy glare for a moment, like he doesn’t have the right to that anger. And Coulson remembers: who knows what she’s gone through, and here he is bitching because she dared worry about him enough to ask. She was probably risking blowing her cover over it, too.

She looks chilling: resolved, _unstoppable_. But she will be stopped. And Coulson is scared of who will do the stopping if it’s not him.

“I just wanted you to see me,” Daisy tells him. “Know that I’m okay and-”

“Are you? Okay?”

She stares at him some more, but it’s so different. It’s the first moment of hesitation he’s seen in her since they started talking. It’s more like surprise - lack of habit. That wherever she goes there’s no one there who knows her, really, who knows the difference between Daisy being okay and not-okay. That’s she’s somehow lost the idea of people being _familiar_ to her and her to people. The wig, the clothes, Coulson guesses they help. The distance. 

Daisy moves towards the bed.

“Anyway, I just wanted you see me,” she says, her back turned to Coulson. He could try to subdue her somehow but she is stronger, faster, more skilled, and Coulson refuses to believe things are that dangerous to her and that desperate for him; he still believes he could talk her into coming back. As if sensing his thoughts Daisy says: “I know the moment I leave this room you are going to raise the alarm and go after me. And I’m a bit tired, today was a close call, I’m not sure I can outrun you a second time.”

Coulson looks at her, frowning, unsure what she’s saying, a stupid nagging hope that she might be ready to give herself up, ready to go home.

But then she grabs the ICER.

“Really?” he asks, almost amused by the extremity of their new situation.

“You’re going to get hurt at this rate,” she replies. “I don’t want you hurt.”

“So you’re going to hurt me first?”

She bites her lip.

The second time she hesitates.

The green light outside falls on her cheek in a way that Coulson can notice the faint but permanent trace Malick made on her skin.

“Preemptive measures,” she says. She gestures towards the board. In the darkness it looks more like an altar to some deity. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to do with me? Minimize the danger?”

And well, she is not wrong, and Coulson was going to ice her, if he had gotten to the gun in time.

“You’re going to shoot me,” he repeats, calmer this time.

“It’s just an ICER, Coulson. Because I know you’re stupid enough to follow me and I want you to have plausible deniability when Director Talbot tries to blame you for my actions. Which he will.”

“This is unfair.”

“I know.” She draws a sad breath. “It’s okay if you don’t forgive me.”

Something relaxes inside of him, like he’s finally given into desperation and can observe his situation with certain black humor. He smirks at Daisy.

“You’re hardly the first woman to shoot me.”

She makes a surprised, appreciative face.

“No need to brag, charm school.”

He chuckles. The muscles in his jaw complain. Has it ever been this long since he laughed? Is he really this pathetic?

She wraps one hand around Coulson’s arm, aiming at the upper arm, knowing that’s the place where the ICER shot will be the least painful (also the least effective, but Coulson guesses she only needs those few minutes to get to safety - _safety_ , he wishes he could believe that). There’s a certain kindness in her crime.

“I miss you,” he says, even though he promised himself he wouldn’t, if they ever were face to face again. That’s the one thing he swore he wouldn’t-

“I know that too,” Daisy says.

Pity.

He was hoping she’d say she missed him too.

But then everything goes to black.

 

**&**

He forgives her.

 

**&**

Daisy unlocks the hotel room in a hurry.

She seems to notice something is off - the vibrations of the room, something extra - as soon as she steps in.

“Did you come back for this?” Coulson asks, swinging the gun in his hand.

He’s sitting in the comfortable chair, in the darkness and Daisy takes a moment to make out his face and relax the already-ready battle stance, undo the fist of her hand.

She shakes his head.

“Too obvious,” she says. “I was looking for a tracker.”

Coulson nods.

“You are living in style,” he says, looking around the luxurious hotel room.

Daisy smiles mysteriously, like a movie star. “Just for tonight.”

He looks at the elegant black dress, the ridiculous wig.

“You haven’t paid for any of this, have you?” he says.

She flings herself into his arms, his own hands making the gesture to receive her before Coulson’s brain even catches up, and kisses him hard. There’s a faint taste of champagne on her lips. Her unfamiliar perfume hides the her familiar smell too well. He wishes he could be downstairs with her, share this mission - they’ve have had fun on these before, but the party is made up of army men who would no doubt recognize Coulson on the spot. She’s used to doing things alone, anyway, he’s sad to say.

“So the sell is confirmed?” he asks, touching her bare back (he should have turned on the lights, he wants to see her properly, it’s been too long, weeks, and spy methods be damned) as Daisy takes the ICER from his hand and tosses it on the bed.

“I’m afraid so,” she replies, straddling his legs on the chair. “Your bosses, of course, know about the whole thing and don’t care.”

Coulson groans, _they’re not my bosses_ , he wants to say, but it’s hard to begrudge Daisy her bitterness over a government agency looking the other way when it comes to anti-Inhuman radicals buying weapons - from the same private contractors that agency employs.

Daisy seems to lose interest in mission talk all of the sudden, pushing her tongue into Coulson’s mouth and thrusting her hips against his groin, squeezing her legs tight around him, drawing his tongue along his jaw now.

“You never bother with foreplay anymore,” he complains in an aroused, sing-song voice.

She presses a smirk against his lips.

“We had four years of foreplay.”

Fair enough, he thinks, letting Daisy’s hands fall on his chest and his belt in a way that should be familiar but has been made unfamiliar by interruptions and absences and aborted plans and _priorities_. Why should Daisy be patient in a world that has no patience - or sympathy - for her? She wants and she wants now (now: freeing him with nimble fingers, pushing clothes aside, making him hard in seconds, falling into him). And Coulson wants her, above all else, and as unexpected as that development - through the years - has been it now fits him like a second skin, like Daisy fits around his cock now, like he fits in her arms.

“And in the middle-” he stops to draw in a breath when she sinks fully into him. “...of a mission. How unprofessional.”

“Advantages of being your own boss,” Daisy says, not waiting a moment, moving her hips already. “You should try it sometime.”

Coulson lets out a fake laugh.

“Sometime,” he repeats, kissing her softly, offering tenderness to her hurry.

He skims his fingers over her artificially blond hair.

“You’re joking, right?” she says, sensing his intentions. “You have any idea of how long it’ll take to put it back on?”

“I’ll help you,” he tells Daisy, knowing she hates the wig, she hates these other versions of herself. He imagines flicking her hair downstairs, laughing at the men who sell guns to the people who murder her people. He hates the wig too. Coulson doesn’t want there to be anything between them.

“What? You don’t think I can pull off blonde?” she teases him. She still looks quite young when she bluffs, even though she never was that, young, not even when they first met.

“Please,” Coulson begs now, holding a lock of hair between his fingers.

Daisy indulges him.

She takes the wig off, careful not to lose the pins, still riding Coulson, fucking him against the expensive white armchair in this expensive white hotel room.

She does it slowly, honoring the ritual.

There it is, Daisy.

She’s always Daisy, it’s just that sometimes she’s more Daisy than others.

Daisy closes her eyes when he touches her real hair, running his fingers across the crisp almost-buzz cut that allows her to slip into other identities so easily.

Coulson scrapes his nails against her scalp gently, making her purr and tremble inside that expensive black dress.

“Come on, Phil,” she says, picking up the rhythm, biting on his bottom lip, and bringing her hand between their bodies. “I’m in a hurry.”

Afterwards he helps her fix her wig as he promised, after he cleans himself up enough that he can leave the hotel without attracting attention. Even if he took it off in the first place he feels good just doing something - something to help, since he can’t be downstairs on the mission. He stands behind her in the bathroom, returning the extravagant accessory pin by pin until Daisy looks a little less Daisy, looking at both her and himself in the mirror. Slowly, that’s the spirit of the ritual, though he knows Daisy is in a hurry. He is not ready to let her go just yet. She smiles a sad smile at him through their reflection, like she’s reading his thoughts.

“I’ll stay until you come back,” he says, though he knows how unreasonable that is.

Daisy shakes her head. “Too dangerous,” she says, turning, running her fingers across Coulson’s cheek. “Don’t get sentimental. Not when I’m so close.”

He nods, remembering the plan.

“Hey,” she says, unprompted, scraping her nails gently against the stubble he never got rid of. “I miss you.”

And Coulson believes her, even though he doesn’t know why she does.

“Soon,” she says, conciliatory.

She walks out of the bathroom and he follows.

Coulson knows he is a liability, her weakness maybe. Every minute she spends with him she risks being apprehended. And Coulson still has no way of proving he is not in love with a terrorist. 

“Don’t forget the tracker,” he says, pushing the little round object into her hand.

Daisy smiles brightly at him.

“What would I do without you?” she says, brushing her lips across his cheek, leaving a trace of lipstick there, tender like this is an old marriage and the obvious joke is her way of appreciating him. She steps back, shaped by the bathroom lights, and runs one hand through her hair, making sure the wig is correctly attached. “How do I look?” she asks Coulson, honestly.

He chuckles. 

“Like a spy,” he replies, touching her arm in encouragement, like he used to do when he was her boss and they were so tragically restrained and insincere with each other. “But don’t worry, nobody downstairs can tell the difference.”

“Okay,” she says, lingering to, in a way that makes Coulson feel whole again. “In a couple of days, I’ll-”

“You’ll call me, I know,” he finishes, pushing her gently away from him, so she can do her job.

How to have this and do their jobs at the same time.

It’s a risk.

They know that.

When Daisy leaves the scent of her expensive, fake perfume lingers.

It has its charms, Coulson thinks, all of this.


End file.
